THE DEEPENING OF PHYSIOLOGY. 327 



ysis still in its youth? Have not partial restate- 

 ments been given of numerous functions ? May one 

 not look forward to the time when these may be 

 completed ?" 



This leads us, in concluding this discussion, to 

 follow Prof. Karl Pearson in pointing out again the 

 radical misunderstanding which exists in many 

 minds in regard to scientific method. The material 

 of science is " the routine of our perceptual ex- 

 perience " ; we think over this, though we never 

 understand it; we make sure by experiment that 

 the sequence of sense-impressions which constitutes 

 the routine is not illusory; we make sure that the 

 routine is perceived by others also (for science is 

 social), lest we should be the victims of an idio- 

 syncrasy; and by and by, if we are clever enough, 

 we give " a description in conceptual shorthand 

 (never the explanation) of the routine of our per- 

 ceptual experience." " The problem of whether 

 life is or is not a mechanism is thus not a question 

 of whether the same things, matter ' and ' force,' 

 are or are not at the back of organic and inorganic 

 phenomena of what is at the back of either class 

 of sense-impressions we know absolutely nothing 

 but of whether the conceptual shorthand of the 

 physicist, his ideal world of ether, atom, and mole- 

 cule, will or will not also suffice to describe the biol- 

 ogists' perceptions." That it does not at present 

 seems the opinion of the more philosophical physi- 

 ologists ; if it ever should it would be " purely an 

 economy of thought; it would provide the great ad- 

 vantages which flow from the use of one instead of 

 two conceptual shorthands, but it would not ' ex- 

 plain ' life any more than the law of gravitation 

 explains the elliptic path of a planet." 



